The trusty dusty dipole.

Time & time again, i’ve tried these compromise antennas, only to come back to a good ole’ dipole.

Nothing i’ve used thus far has been able to beat it.

It’s a solid 1 or 2 s units above all the other antennas i’ve used, and the noise level is acceptable too.

I sold the magnetic loop this week. For someone who is already in a compromise situation, a magnetic loop is NOT the answer. You’ll be sorely disappointed if you rely on that kind of antenna for your “sole” antenna.

I’m only able to get the apex of the dipole up about 25 feet, which I figure is good enough for a 20m dipole. If I made it for 40, there’d be too much interaction with the ground, and too much loss. So 20m it is.

If I had the space to put the legs completely vertical I would, but i’m dealing with a small yard, so Inverted V works best, and since they’re more omnidirectional, I don’t have to worry about having a rotatable dipole.

Here’s a shot of the dipole, I had this up previously, but took it down to try 40m legs, when I had horrible performance on 40, I completely removed it, figured it just wouldn’t work, but didn’t realize that it would work for 20m. Give it a chance! lol

20m Inverted V – excuse that annoying star in the background

So back up it went, and boy am I ever glad its back up! I’ll keep this one up too.

I plugged the antenna analyzer into it, and got a 1.7 SWR on the first try, with a center frequency of around 14.150, I need to make some small adjustments, but anything under 2 to 1 for a dipole will work until it’s fine tuned.